Traditionally, superiors assess the functional cognitive capacity of their subordinates based on direct observations, direct queries, radio communications, and/or historical performance. This practice may be sufficient some of the time, but not always. As a result, one or more of the superior's subordinates may become overworked or overstressed, or conversely underworked and underutilized, which may lead to inefficiencies and injuries.
There is a trend in military and civilian operations towards distributed teams connected via voice communications. The distributed nature of the teams impedes direct, visual observation and denies the broad range of visual behavioral cues that team members can use to assess an individual's workload. Even when visual contact can be made, the culture of many task environments may prevent subordinates from revealing vulnerabilities. The subordinate may maintain an appearance of composure and competence even when they may be overcome by the stress and workload of a given situation. Furthermore, moment-to-moment variability in fatigue, stress levels, vigilance, and cognitive capacity may compromise workload predictions based on past history. Additionally, it may not be possible to use past history to predict an individual's response to task demands when task environments change.
In dynamic and enduring operations, such as those of the battle field and first responder incidents, an individual's workload may undergo rapid and/or extreme changes within very small windows of time. Alternatively, the individual's workload may trend slowly over time to precariously low or high workload levels. Without adequate and direct monitoring of each subordinate's workload capacity, some subordinates may be tasked with more task demands than they can effectively handle, while other personnel may go underutilized to the point of boredom, which could compromise their responsiveness to subsequent task responsibilities.
Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a real-time workload assessment of subordinates to a superior, which may be used to adjust subordinate task assignments and thereby workload levels.